This is about a mother’s post on Reddit. The basic story is this: a nine year old boy is in line for class. An older girl grabs his testicles, pulls them, and then punches him there. This is entirely unprovoked. He tries to tell his teacher what happened, but the teacher doesn’t believe him. He tries to get help from the office, but they are more or less uninterested. Later that day he does finally get ahold of his mom, who comes and gets him. He’s hurt badly enough that he can’t go to school the next day, he still can’t really walk. The mother is very upset at the school, and she’s writing on Reddit to ask if people think she’s overreacting.

There are very few discussions of mga anywhere, and very very few good ones. This Reddit thread might be the most interesting one I’ve seen. Perhaps because the commenters are almost all very sympathetic to the boy, they are all reaching to try to describe what they’re upset about on behalf of the mom. In doing so, it’s like this Reddit thread is trying to wrestle with exactly what mga is.

A number of the comments point out a double standard at play in favor of the girl; many of these are along the lines of “If the roles were reversed,” by which they mean if a boy had grabbed a girl by the genitals, or breast, the reaction by the adults involved would have been swift and decisive. This is a consensus with the commenters at least in the sense that several say this and no one says otherwise (although one suggests that discussion of the double standard might be unpersuasive as a tactic for getting through to the school officials). What is interesting to me about this “reversed” example is that while grabbing a girls’ genitals or breast is clearly eggregiously wrong, grabbing a boys’ genitals is both wrong in exactly the same way AND a way to seriously injure or even possibly kill him (we’ll get to lethality in a later entry). So reversing the roles, in this case, actually de-emphasizes the harm to the boy (although I don’t think this was the intent of any of the commenters).

Several of the commenters express concern about physical injury, and suggest that she bring her son to see a doctor. I suppose this is, in and of itself, unremarkable; they read what happened to the boy as potentially very serious physically, and are appropriately concerned. Some of them mention specific kinds of physical harm that may or may not have occurred that the mother and the boys’ doctor should be concerned about. In a later article I’ll talk about physiological and other kinds of harm; here I’ll say that my feeling is the commenters are bringing up the possibility of serious physical injury in an attempt to express that they take what happened to the boy seriously, for lack of other ways to express this (as we’ll see).

Many of the outraged comments mention that what happened is “inappropriate touching.” Similar to the “roles reversed” thought experiment, inappropriate touching groups grabbing, pulling and punching a boys’ testicles with, say, touching a boys’ buttocks. It strikes me as a massively dismissive euphemism for the trauma and violation the boy experienced.
HOWEVER, I want to be clear that I’m not faulting the people commenting for any of this weird understatement. The feel of emotion in the comments is convincing to me; I think everyone is, at least at the moment of their writing, outraged and hurt on behalf of this boy. I think when they talk about “inappropriate touching,” they’re doing their best to address the non-medical/non-physiological harm. But they’re all grasping at ways to talk about something that no one ever talks about, and that they may never have thought about before. I don’t even think it’s possible even to think about something that no one ever talks about, not at first anyway. So “potentially lethal, malicious harm to a boy’s genitals” becomes “inappropriate touching,” not because they don’t take it seriously, but because we have no way of talking about mga.

More than one of the comments compares the assault on the boy to other kinds of assault; a couple of them mention that what happened to him is equivalent to eye gouging. This feels right to me as a comparable injury in several ways; 

1) if you take a finger or thumb in the eye, it’s immediately extremely painful and disorienting.

2) You stand a decent chance of not getting permanently damaged. Probably it will hurt very badly and shut you down, but it (might) be cleared up within a day, or even faster.

3) If you are permanently damaged, it affects a whole category of life experiences in a different way than, say, a permanent scar on your arm or leg does. Long term or permanent damage of this sort feels more intimate and personal than persistent IT band problems in a knee or limited range of motion in a shoulder, for example. If you blind someone, you’ve messed them up in a more personal way than if you give them recurring pain in a joint.

4) there’s a thin and dangerous line between “very painful but no lasting harm” and “part of your life is now over” for both kinds of injury.

5) because of the very personal life-changing nature of the permanent injury at risk, one could reasonably expect a high level of fear involved with the injury, and a high amount of negative emotion generally (outrage, anger, sadness) towards the perpetrator, if there’s a perpetrator involved. That person wasn’t risking just permanently hurting you; they were risking permanently hurting you in a particularly personal and dehumanizing way.

So I think the eye gouge is a decent comparison. However, an important difference between the eye gouge and the testicle pull is that testicles are sex organs. This has two implications. One is that an assault on testicles is an attack with a sexual component. The NATURE of the sexuality could be variable in that sense, but the fact that it is sexual in a literal (and, i would argue, meaningful) way is inextricable. This feels like an additional kind of wrong, one that we normally find completely unacceptable (oddly though, I suspect that it is more culturally acceptable to attack a boys’ genitals than it is to attack his eyes). The other is that this kind of attack is a violation of the victim’s identity. Only biological males have testicles. This is a special way to hurt someone, a way that isolates them and makes the specific nature of their body a locus of shame, fear, and isolation. Everyone has eyes; while an attack on the eyes is somehow more personal than an attack on the leg, it isn’t nearly as personal as an attack on the genitals, because your genitals distinguish you from other people in a way that your leg (or your eye) doesn’t. When she did this to him, she made his sexual identity a target.

It seems possible to me that the commenters might be trying to get at that second point with “if the roles were reversed” comments; they may have a sense that we, as a society, have agreed on the sanctity of female body parts as a locus of identity. It’s not ok to hurt girls in a way that is special to girls, we all know that; so maybe we need to make that comparison to understand why it’s not ok to hurt boys that way. To the first point, many of the commenters describe what happened to the boy as sexual assault. They don’t provide arguments for this position; the impression I get is that these commenters feel that it’s obviously a sexual assault, and that there would be nothing to argue. A couple of commenters dissent in this; one seems to downplay the attack altogether, and feels that “sexual assault” gives too much weight to what happened, where the other might have a more nuanced viewpoint, where genital assault ought to be in it’s own category. But for the most part it seems that “sexual assault” is a consensus.

As we tend to fixate on whether or not there was permanent physical damage when we discuss mga (more on that in a later article), I think it’s important to keep in mind that the harm of sexual assault isn’t dependent on permanent physical injury. We understand this very well in the case of rape; we don’t require a rape to have caused permanent physical injury in order to take it seriously. A hypothetical rape that involves zero physical injury is horrible, and we all understand that. An eye injury that didn’t turn out to be permanently disabling could also be very traumatic beyond however long the injury and pain lasts, but rape is just different, and it’s worse. But somehow we don’t think to apply that intuition to mga.

THE (TERRIBLE) RESPONSE OF THE ADULTS AT THE SCHOOL
The majority of the commenters feel that the adults at the school mishandled and underreacted to what happened. There’s outrage that the teacher didn’t believe the boy, that adults didn’t particularly try to help or attend to him, and that his parents weren’t immediately contacted. There are several versions of “you should be able to expect more care, and better care, for a much less severe situation.”

I’ve noticed this in some other stories I’ve read about mga at schools. In this story, about a six year old boy who had been repeatedly kicked in the groin at school,

https://cafemom.com/parenting/212480-boy-urinating-blood-genitals-kicking-game  

one of the teachers apparently said “oh they’re playing bangkok, the kids play that here all the time,” referring to boys getting hit in the genitals. The six year old boy was urinating blood, apparently for some time (again, unclear how long from the article).

PUNISHMENT AND EFFECT ON THE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT
Some of the commenters express concern about the effect that this incident could have on the school environment, in particular in regards to whether or not the girl is punished in a way that makes an impact on people in the environment.  (The school claims that she was being punished severely, but that they are respecting her privacy and not disclosing the punishment).

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCERNS
None of the commenters say anything about potential psychological trauma to the boy; none of them suggest that he see a therapist, that the mother ask him how he felt about what happened, etc. There are some oblique allusions along these lines…for example, one commenter imagines another kid who has been abused, overhearing the teacher telling the boy she didn’t believe him, and the psychological effect this would have on that imaginary child.

THE GIRL
A couple of the commenters make speculations about the girl. One of them suggests that maybe she, herself, is being abused; two others suggest that she could be modelling behavior, that maybe someone told her that this is what she should do to boys, and so she’s doing it. 

So commenters speculate about the girl, her motives, her background, possible mistreatment she’s received. When we read these comments, we might begin to wonder whether or not she needs help. We might feel sympathy for the girl, want her to receive the care she needs to move forward and be healthy.

When I said that no one expressed any psychological concerns, that wasn’t exactly true; readers speculated about and sometimes expressed concern for the attacker, the girl. Just not for the victim, the boy.

Please pause on this point for a moment. This is the most extensive and thoughtful discussion of mga I have found. The victim is a child, and this group of people (with few exceptions) see what happened to him as sexual assault, yet no one thinks to ask about or make suggestions about the boy’s emotional state. No one says “trauma” or “ptsd,” no one recommends seeing a therapist. Instead, there is interest in the psychological health of his attacker.

MY CONCLUSIONS

I know full well that what I’m doing here isn’t science. I do hope my writing provokes someone into doing some science. In the meantime, I will draw conclusions with the sad confidence that I’m further along in the study of mga than anyone else is. Here’s where I’m at:

1) mga is sexual assault. For the victim, it’s a literal assault on their sex. For the perpetrator, the motivations and attitude could be sexual, or could be dominance and dehumanization. When we think of rape, we don’t really distinguish one of those motivations from the other when we label the act as rape. Both are sexual assault regardless of the details of the drives and motivations of the assailant.

To look at is from this perspective is to assume, for example, that males who are victims of mga probably have ptsd symptoms. That’s A LOT of males. We should further assume (I speculate) that their symptoms are seriously exacerbated by the fact that not only are they essentially not allowed to talk about those feelings, but they are more or less required to laugh at themselves and others who get hurt this way. A nine year old boy who this kind of thing happened to will be at the movies, and his mother and sister will laugh and cheer at an assault of this sort on a victim his age, and he will be expected to laugh as well, or at least to keep his mouth shut. There is (possibly) a hint of this later in the thread, where the mother thanks everyone, but says her son would just prefer if everyone stopped talking about what happened.

2) mga is similar to, and in the big picture, worse than, eye gouging. So if eye gouging is not appropriate in media, mga is definitely not appropriate. In a real life human interaction, mga is defiitely inappropriate if eye gouging is inappropriate.

3) We cannot talk about this topic well, and maybe we can’t even think about it well. These commenters were discussing the sexual assault of a girl, they would have a wealth of well developed shared concepts and vocabulary. But instead they are reaching around in the dark for some kind of understanding, and their language, explanations and imaginations fall short. This is clearest in the lack of (expressed) psychological concern for the boy, but evident in lots of other subtle ways (which I hope I demonstrated).

4) a necessary philosophical/mental/spiritual operation when trying to understand aspects of mga is “if the roles were reversed,” always factoring in 1) and 2) above, when relevant. This might sound simple, but I suspect that it will be so unfamiliar as to feel near impossible, and certainly it will seem like something other than the common sense exercise it is.

A final thought…I have spent a lot of time doing my best to research this topic, and this random thread by a bunch of non-experts on reddit is perhaps the best discussion I’ve found on the topic. The thread, as far as I can tell, consists entirely of spontaneous reactions. That is pathetic. A mild bravo to the commenters in the thread, I guess…boo to the rest of us, especially to the myriad industries and fields of study dedicated to the well being of young people.

Below are quotes from the reddit thread, in italics. I add some commentary (no italics).

[As a teacher I can’t for the life of me understand why the teacher didn’t freak out herself! Any report of inappropriate touching (sexual or not) is extremely serious. If I were the teacher, I would write down exactly what was said and the other students accounts of what happened. I would then immediately march both kids right down to my principal and explain the whole thing. I would think that my principal would be handling an offense like this because of the seriousness of this. Then I would personally see the social worker for help on how to manage this situation in regards to my management in the classroom. 

Definitely demand to talk to the dean about this. The teacher did not handle this well and they need to know it. If this kind of behavior is being mishandled, what else is not being addressed and reported. Students in that school need to know this is a big deal and that they can confide in the adults to help.I agree with another post about seeing a doctor, if only for the documentation. ][The only thing that I could think of while reading the teacher’s reaction is how the children would respond. Could you imagine if a little kid who was being abused somehow outside of school overheard that exchange? Having the idea that it’s he said she said confirmed by someone who should be a trusted adult seems so wrong.  ][In a perfect world she’d be suspended for a few days and upon her return they’d have a presentation on personal conduct and that any touching like that won’t be tolerated, it’s illegal, and it can land you in jail.]
[I don’t think you’re overreacting. I think you’re absolutely right that if he’d grabbed a girl classmate’s crotch or punched her in the breast area, there would be much greater consequences. In fact, I’d bet you’d have gotten a phone call as soon as it happened.  ]
[For sure, but even if a student were punched in the face or kicked in the shins a parent should be notified immediately. Especially if their child is in pain.  ]
[that’s not an excuse to overreact though. just because people are overreacting when it comes to pop tart guns that doesn’t mean this girl needs to be suspended for sexual assault or something. a kid hit another kid. there certainly has to be repercussions, but i don’t they have to be incredibly drastic.]

Some assumptions I think are pretty safe: “overreact” means that calling what happened sexual assault is an overreaction (not simply miscategorization). “A kid hit another kid” means what happened to the boy isn’t particularly different from if he had gotten kicked in the shin or punched in the arm.
Here’s the interesting question for me: would this commenter have a problem with the girl sticking her finger in the boys’ eye? Would that have been “a kid hit another kid?”  If you’re more or less cool with a boy getting his testicles pulled and punched, maybe you simply don’t care what happens to boys. So what about eye gouging? And if eye gouging is also “a kid hit another kid,” then how about stabbing with a scissors? Where, for this commenter, is the line between hitting and something worse?
Also interesting is “sexual assault” as an overreaction. This implies that what happened to this boy is not as bad as a sexual assault. So maybe we can assume that this commenter would find it more troubling if the girl had caressed the boys’ genitals, rather than attacked them. So ask yourself…if you were that boy, which of those things would you rather have happen to you? Would you rather have the older kid touch your genitals inappropriately but non-violently, or to get your testicles pulled and punched?

[After a very long discussion with both the dean of the school and his teacher, we have reached the conclusion that yes, things were handled badly as far as us not being contacted, they were not trying to make excuses, but there were circumstances that arose and they could not contact us until today. The girl is being severely punished as per the student code of conduct, privacy laws protect that information from me which I respect. The situation is being taken very seriously.

His teacher felt bad for coming across as unbelieving, when I spoke to her she told me that she knew the girl was lying when confronted, and asked my son for witnesses simply to get her to tell the truth. Plus when getting a referral it is necessary to list all witnesses.]
The privacy part is interesting and weird; don’t punishments serve primarily as a deterrant? If so, how do you deter a population of students with undisclosed punishments? But that’s outside the scope of this blog, and beyond my expertise.

[So many issues…

Yes, it would be sexual assault if he did it to a girl, and he would have been suspended if not expelled, even without witnesses.

Yes, testicular damage is potentially very serious. You may want to get an ultrasound of his testicles to make sure there is no real damage done. Probably it’s okay, but…

Random speculation: someone told that girl what to do in the event someone tried to sexually assault her – grab the attacker’s testicles – and she decided to try it out.]

This is an interesting speculation. Questions I have (that maybe I’ll investigate in a future post): 1) do we communicate about violence differently to girls than we do to boys? 2) Do we de-emphasize compassion when we talk to girls about violence? Do we tell them not to think about how they might hurt someone, or what that hurt might be like? 3) Do we de-emphasize responsibility when we talk to girls about violence? Do we err on the side of telling girls to hurt boys, rather than telling them to not hurt boys? Do we discourage girls from thinking about the potential consequences of their violence, to themselves (like being held accountable/getting in trouble) or to their victims (causing physical or psychological harm)? 

[Father here. last year my son got into fist fight with another kid a year younger and was suspended for a whole week.

If some like this had happened, it would probably be expulsion for sure.

So, no over reaction on your part. I say go full “angry mob mode” on them!]

My assumption here is that the fight his son was involved in didn’t include testicle pulling/punching, and that this father is saying that this level of violence is worse than what his son got suspended for a week for (in other words, he’s saying “if something like this had happened in the fight my son was involved in”).

[If it is brushed off as no big thing she’s liable to do it to him or another boy again , since it got a big response from him but little or no trouble for her .]

AGAIN, I have no expertise on the punishment question. Take what I’m about to say with a hefty grain of salt. I have to imagine that a school that is worried about the privacy of their students in such a way that punishments are kept secrets is also not really going to punish the students. So, yeah, I assume this girl got away with doing this to this boy, and her “punishment” was having a conversation with an adult or two who are very understanding and respectful of her needs, rights and feelings. 

[So you’re telling me a child (boy or girl regardless) sexually assaulted your son and the school isn’t doing anything about it? Oh hell no. The school does something about it or you call the police and they do something about it. ]

Here’s something I’m curious about…would the supportive commenters be calling it sexual assault if she had kicked him in the testicles rather than grabbed him? This particular distinction isn’t brought up anywhere in any of the comments. I guess I’m assuming that part of what makes this incident particularly resonant for these commenters is that she grabbed his testicles, rather than hit or kicked.

I suppose grabbing seems like an especially eggregious violation. Maybe kicking seems more impersonal. I wonder if there’s a difference for victims. I don’t think we can know that without talking to lots of victims. As I think about it, I think that part of what makes this kind of assault so dehumanizing is that you can essentially rape a male in a fraction of a second by attacking his genitals. No fuss for you, a world of pain, humiliation, dehumanization, and sexual violation for him. So from THAT perspective getting kicked (kneed, struck) in the testicles is the more dehumanizing. However, a grab seems viscerally invasive in a different kind of way, and the fact that it lasts longer magnifies (at least in my mind) the aspect of the assault where one human is willing to dehumanize another. Again, I think we simply can’t know, because we have no information about the victims. I have no idea, and probably I’m fruitlessly comparing two kinds of horrible. Nevertheless, I do suspect that the grabbing (as opposed to some seemingly less personal kind of assault) had an impact on these responses. Again, don’t take any of the above as my doubting this commenter’s sincerity or insight. They are trying their best with something we not only never talk or think about, but perhaps aren’t supposed to talk or think about.

[Can we please stop calling this a sexual assault? Sure, it might fit it by the letter of the law, but it’s clearly its own thing separate from normal sexual assault cases. Calling it out as a sexual assault is disingenuous unless you’re suggesting that charges should be brought under that term.].

It’s not clear to me that this commenter is downplaying what happened, and when they say “its own thing separate from normal sexual assault cases” it feels like this person might be reaching for insight. After all, in the big picture of things, we obviously TREAT this very differently from sexual assault, so shouldn’t that fact, as accidental or unjust as it may be, be part of the equation? Should we encourage the boy to think of himself as a sexual assault victim if 

Is this sexual assault? When someone assaults a man’s genitals, is this sexual assault? Let’s work this out a bit.

MAYBE it’s sexual assault if the intent is sexual. MAYBE it’s NOT sexual assault if the intent isn’t sexual.

AND/OR

MAYBE it’s sexual assault if the harm is sexual. MAYBE it’s NOT sexual assault if the harm isn’t sexual.

Going out on a limb, I think the people who are saying that this IS sexual assault are thinking more about the harm, where the people who are saying it isn’t are thinking more about the intent.

MAYBE this means that the people who see this as sexual assault are thinking more about the victim, where people who don’t are thinking more about the perpetrator, or the general propriety/impropriety of the act, in their worldview. Maybe inappropriate (intentional) sexual acts are offensive to this group in a way that has nothing to do with victims and harm. I imagine they’d ascribe a kind of abstract harm to the abberant sexual acts. When I say “abstract” I’m not downplaying this possibility; I just think it starts to venture outside of my topic though. I’m exploring this territory because I suspect that thinking about harm to a victim is central to taking mga seriously, and forgetting about harm to a victim is (I suspect) central to not taking mga seriously. There will be more on this in later posts, especially when we get into media and talk about how acts of mga play out, and how we see (or don’t see) the victims.

[I totally agree with everyone saying to push harder. For one, it’s totally ridiculous that they didn’t call you as soon as he told the teacher. It’s completely unacceptable. Second, that girl totally needs to be punished in some way. That right there is a double standard, as you can bet they’d be screaming harassment/assault if it was the other way around.

Now, third is something that most people might not think of. Grabbing and punching someone (especially their genitals) without provocation is highly unusual, even with kiddos. It’s possible this girl is being treated this way herself, and is acting out as a cry for help. She could also be hurting other children like this. By pushing the school to react, you’re not only protecting your child, but also protecting other kids and hopefully getting her help if she needs it. If I were in this situation, I would tell the school that I suspected abuse so they could have a counselor meet with her to see of there were other signs of abuse.]  

Two themes come together in this comment. An earlier comment expressed concern that the girl might do this again; this commenter expresses concern that this girl may have, herself, been abused.If you extend this kind of thinking, you imagine a historical trail of abuse, where an abuser hurts a number of people, and some of those victims go on to become abusers. Those new abusers create new groups of victims, which will then create sub-groups of new abusers.
SO, question for readers…did this make you think about the boy? Not necessarily this boy, but mga victims in general…does it make you wonder if mga creates abusers?
Going way out on a limb. I wonder if abusers have a clouded perception of right and wrong in regards to abuse. If they’ve been hurt, AND it’s unclear to them that it was wrong to have been hurt that way (like their abuser told them it’s their own fault, or that it’s no big deal), perhaps this contributes to abuse. Conversely, a victim of an intentional wrong, who it told that they were wronged and treated with sympathy and respect MAY have an easier time KNOWING that what happened to them is wrong, and be less likely to want to (or to follow through with) hurting others this way.
IF this (or some version of it) is true, then we need to be worried that mga is seriously poisoning our social environment, because it is so hard to find any advocate for these victims, or discussion of what has happened to them.

[I guess I’m just wondering if I’m overreacting here?

No, not in the least.

I feel that it’s a complete double standard

Yep, you’ll be dealing with that for his entire school career unfortunately.]

[All the school’s reaction taught that little girl is that she can go around grabbing boy’s privates and there’s no consequences. And all they taught your son was that girls can go around doing whatever they want and there’s really no consequences for their actions. Do whatever you can to make sure that there is a resolution and disciplinary outcome to this. ]

Both of these comments paint a bleak picture, where boys’ rights, at least in the specific and narrow categories of violence and sex, are fucked. 

from the mother [This is a big concern for me, he’s already a bit of a bully magnet. I will not be showing pictures to anyone. I am going to keep this as low profile as possible for his sake, he’s a sensitive kid. I’ve called his doctor a few times and they are fully aware of the situation. My son has had the same pediatrician his whole life and he is very good. I trust his instincts. ]

[You’re downplaying the violence due to it being his genitals, which is retarded; certainly, she shouldn’t lawyer up, and the police don’t need to be involved, but expulsion would be reasonable. As adults, this might be sexual assault, it might be aggravated assault, but they’re children… however, this still constitutes grievous bodily harm, especially considering what an ultrasound may reveal, and would you want a child who gave your sone two black eyes and gouged him in the eye to remain in school? That is the trauma equivalent, medically speaking.]

[I would want her expelled, it’s often a joke, but hitting someone in the testicles is actually, medically quite serious, and yanking as well? A fair reversed situation would involve two black eyes and a bit of eye gouging.

If he was walking funny you should have taken him to the ER immediately, testicular torsion requires surgery within hours, or results in organ death.]

[Yes. This is sexual assault. I am horrified at after witnesses vouched for this little boy no one took action. Honestly, I’m horrified that the teacher just didn’t believe him straight up. So sexist of the teacher. Why would a little boy lie about getting punched in the balls? ]

[I don’t feel like it’s sexual assault in the way that we’d mean it if these kids were high schoolers or adults. These kids are likely still a few years away from puberty so I think I’d need to know more about what exactly went down and about this girl to even think about calling it sexual assault. It is assault, no question, but did she hit him in the balls because she saw it as a sexual place or just because she’d heard it hurt boys to hit them there?]

[Of course it’s sexual assault, the idea that people think gender matters with stuff like this completely baffles me.]

[Expelled?

Every school I’ve taught in, at some stage the boys (not that gender matters) have played a ‘game’ where they try to flick each other in the testicles. Should they all be expelled?

Teach them why it’s wrong and move on.]

[OW! You are right, this is a serious issue. Just my two cents, but you might think about not focusing on the unfairness, but really just on the seriousness of the issue – at that age, everyone needs to understand how serious it is to hit/grab/pinch a boy in that area. My parents were very clear with me once were about that age – that if I’m wrestling/fighting with my brother, that area is completely off limits because it could have such serious consequnces. I would also be very concerned at how lax they were in regards to his health. He had trouble walking and they sent him back to class? They need to take his health more seriously.]

[from Jacobman They think that they’ve already considered the seriousness of the issue though. The easiest way to show them that this isn’t the case is with the addition of the comparison. Not to mention that ignoring double standards and sexism isn’t really something I ever suggest. Again, if boys were allowed to grab girls in the crotch and then kick them there while girls got suspended for extended periods of time if they grabbed a boy in the junk and hit them there, should we just leave that issue alone?]